Backyard: El Traspatio

Rated NR122 minutes2009

The real-life epidemic of wo­men murdered just south of the U.S. border inspired this intelligent Mexican thriller by Carlos Carrera (The Crime of Father Amaro). A big-city detective (Ana de la Reguera) is transferred to Juarez to investigate a rash of unsolved killings, and though she and her grudging partner (Marco Perez) nab a prime suspect—a former employee of a wealthy Texas businessman (Jimmy Smits)—they’re hobbled by indifference, incompetence, corruption, and the broadcasts of a radio watchdog (Joaquin Cosio). Screenwriter Sabina Berman illuminates the complex global factors that make poor working women targets for sex criminals, while Carrera underscores the daunting scale of the problem with panoramas of a vast and implacable desert. In English and subtitled Spanish.
ByAndrea Gronvall